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D ATA S H E E T

RiverMuse Pro
Enterprise Class Real-time Operations Console for the New IT

Introducing RiverMuse Pro


RiverMuse Pro is a next-generation IT operations management platform designed to manage today’s
highly dynamic datacenter and network infrastructures. It combines the power of a robust Manager of
Managers (MoM) functionality - centralizing event collection from other management systems as well
as from the infrastructure - with real-time event correlation and analysis (ECA) capabilities to detect and
alert on business impacting incidents. Its architecture offers a number of disruptive innovations which are
critical to managing virtualized environments and addressing the common failings of legacy IT event and
fault management systems.

Why Legacy IT Operations Management Systems Fail


Legacy IT operations management platforms are unable to keep pace with the evolution to dynamic environments.
This is because of several reasons:

Their architectures are dependent on extensive manual configuration and change management. For
example, when a new infrastructure instance is to be brought under management, specific information about the
new entity needs to be encoded into the associated business rules. This results in never-ending deployment cycles
and makes change management support wholly unfeasible for today’s dynamic environments.

Individual management system configurations are not reusable even within the same organization. As a
result, support for an individual device or a new event collection agent needs to be developed from scratch and
requires significant consulting or internal staff hours.

They require multiple bolt-on products and expertise in different proprietary languages to support basic
operation. Typically configuration of a new managed entity requires changes in multiple component systems.
These systems often use different proprietary languages making the process even more cumbersome.

Raw events and processed alert content are not preserved. This limits their ability to drill down into historic
events for troubleshooting, verification and compliance assurance.

High complexity, cost and lock-in for customers to their current vendor systems. Current IT operations
management systems have high license costs and given their complexity and manual configuration requirements,
are several-fold more expensive to deploy and maintain. Customers are also locked-in to the vendor’s roadmap
for new equipment and application support.
D ATA S H E E T

RiverMuse Pro: Innovative Architecture


RiverMuse Pro is built on a new breakthrough architecture that draws upon the power of the latest management,
collaboration and integration technologies.

Event Agnostic
Unlike traditional IT operations management systems, where events have to originate from the universe of known
entities that have been previously configured, RiverMuse Pro is completely event agnostic. If an entity already exists in
its own database RiverMuse Pro automatically deploys the appropriate event processing business logic. If an entity is
unknown, regardless of its source - RiverMuse Pro starts a dynamic exploration and enrichment process. This helps it
automatically decide the right event conditioning that needs to be applied - without any form of manual intervention.

Abstracted Business Rules Configuration


The RiverMuse Pro architecture defines business logic in the form of RMO (RiverMuse Object) files which represent
characteristics of a managed entity, and are loaded based upon discovery of those entities on the network. When
required, “live” values can be retrieved dynamically (in the form of dynamic variables) from external management
systems, databases or from the managed entity itself. This is critical to eliminating any kind of manual configuration
when a new managed entity is added or detected.

Reusable and Transportable Business Logic (TBL)


RiverMuse Pro uses centralized business logic to define the conditioning actions for event acquisition, enrichment, de-
duplication, correlation, and alerting. Since the logic is based upon data abstracted from the actual managed entity, it
is easily shareable across the multiple instances within and outside a particular installation. This also allows the larger
Rivermuse community to develop, collaborate and share configuration files for specific devices or applications as required.
Automatic
File Input Validation Database

variables

Compile Binaries Data conditions


Text
(rmo) & Validate (rmb) Load actions
Manual Manual alert_rules
Input Validation agent_data_rules

entities

Figure 1: The Architecture for Reusable and Transportable Business Logic

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Separation of Events and Alerts


RiverMuse Pro supports a dual-tier architecture wherein events and alerts are maintained in separate tables. The
system stores all events in their original state. Once events are processed into alerts based on relevant business
logic - it maintains a record of each subsequent version as it is modified through successive operator actions. This
ensures that interdependent business rules are never compromised and the integrity of each level of business logic is
maintained.

Automated Event Enrichment through Federation


Unlike legacy IT operations management platforms that need to rely on data within their configured system and
database, RiverMuse Pro has been built for federated interaction and action. It supports flexible and rapid integration
with external CMDB or monitoring systems, so that its topology is always updated with the latest information available.
To enable this, the RiverMuse Pro platform supports multiple types of standards based integration mechanisms including
Web Services (XML/SOAP), Java and SNMP.

RiverMuse Pro: Features


RiverMuse Pro will appear very familiar to operations personnel who work with today’s leading fault management
systems. It supports all of the standard event management capabilities that operations teams require for day to day
management and much more.

Event Capture
A flexible mediation layer and integration API based on Web 2.0 and XML/SOAP technology enables the collection of
event data from any service or network component using either passive event collection (e.g. SNMP, Syslog, WMI etc.)
or active polling (e.g. using ICMP/ping, SNMP, VMware API etc.). The mediation layer also supports the centralized
configuration of agents through the API.

Example: New VMware Agent: The VMware active agent integrates with VMware vSphere, via the powerful
CIM (Common Information Model) API. Through this integration it can query the vSphere system for
additional data on entity configuration and health statistics on demand, based on the configured business
logic. It is also able to passively receive events and messages from the vSphere management system.

Event and Alert Processing


RiverMuse Pro performs automated correlation and analysis across multiple events and alerts based on pre-configured
or customized business rules to dramatically lower the number of actionable items. Event analysis and processing
includes de-duplication, failure and resolved correlation and the application of time-based rules, coupled with follow-
on external actions like escalation or forwarding to a Service Desk platform.

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D ATA S H E E T

Event Processing Rules Management


An easy to configure graphical rules wizard enables centralized management of business rules to process any kind of
external event. Execution of newly configured rules can be verified using a record and replay mechanism.

Event and Alert Storage


RiverMuse Pro supports a scalable database architecture that
stores both real-time and historical alert and event data and
related configurations for simplified management. Since event
and alert data are persistent, RiverMuse Pro enables advanced
forensics and historical audits for regulatory compliance or
analysis purposes. It also maintains an accurate audit trail of
actions and ownership around incoming events and alerts, and
their progression through the operations workflow.

Alert Management Console Figure 2: Java Enterprise Desktop Console

RiverMuse Pro offers a robust, Java based native client console that can provide operators reliable, 24/7 visualization
of real time alerts, managed objects, severity, ownership, status and more. The console supports multiple alert displays
and tabbed views with advanced filtering logic. It also allows operators to access context sensitive tools like Splunk,
Telnet or SSH connections to the managed entity right from the alert record, for easy convenience.

RiverMuse Pro: Breakthrough Capabilities


RiverMuse Pro offers a number of breakthrough capabilities based on its innovative IT operations management
architecture.

Centralized Rules Configuration


RiverMuse Pro supports centralized event rules configuration for all RiverMuse collectors distributed across the
enterprise. All de-duplication and correlation rules are stored in a central database accessible using ANSI SQL. This
removes the complexity and potential of risk of misconfiguration when having to update multiple files across the
enterprise – something that frequently happens with older MoM systems.

Automatic Management by Presence


Further, RiverMuse Pro supports automated detection and management of new entities on the network. Presence of
new entities is detected either when new events are received, or when RiverMuse Pro is configured to periodically
check across registered subnets and broadcast addresses. Once the new entity is detected, RiverMuse Pro initiates
dynamic exploration and discovery to automatically identify the nature of this new entity and ascertain the business
logic that should be applied.
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D ATA S H E E T

Business Context through Dynamic Enrichment


Since RiverMuse Pro can be easily integrated with external management systems, it can augment its business logic
with the required business context to make effective prioritization decisions. For example, when a database failure
event is received, it can be configured to look up dependent application services from a CMDB and use that information
to prioritize the processed alert. Another example includes integration to a knowledge base system to look up contact
and escalation procedures. With this information, RiverMuse can automatically notify the contact and escalate as
necessary.

TBL Studio
RiverMuse Pro supports a unique web-based TBL Studio that is activated once a subscription account is verified. The
Studio hosts and automatically syncs new configuration files (that extend coverage to new types of managed entities),
and updated versions of the Java Enterprise Desktop console with the registered customer installation.

RiverMuse Pro: Benefits


• Complete visibility and control across dynamic infrastructures spanning networks, systems, applications and services in one
single platform
• Advanced correlation, de-duplication and filtering capabilities process thousands of events into a manageable number of
actionable alerts in real time
• Scalable architecture and cost-effective licensing makes it ideal for all customers from mid-size to large enterprise as well
as for Telecom carriers and MSP’s
• Small footprint application (less than 50 MB) ensures quick installation (under 5 minutes) and out of the box capabilities
facilitate rapid time to value (in a few hours)
• Inherent simplicity, automation and reusability dramatically lowers operating cost compared to legacy management systems
• Natively supports multi-tenant operations from segregated data store to personalized visual display on the alert console
• Offerings like the Netcool probe Migration Toolkit provides assistance to move out from legacy IT operations management
systems quickly and efficiently
• Subscription based licensing model requires no upfront software cost and Capex allocation
• Extensive support from RiverMuse and its customer community helps stay ahead of new infrastructure roll-outs

HARDWARE REQUIREMENTS London Office


• Dual core CPU The Foundry
• 4GB RAM 154-156 Blackfriars Road
• 250 GB Hard disk space to store the software London, SE1 8EN UK
+44 (0)870 141 4514
• 250 GB Hard disk space for DB storage
• AMD Opteron or Intel Xeon Processor with External Cache Silicon Valley Office
• 2 GB of dedicated swap space 805 Veterans Blvd., Suite 309
Redwood City, CA 94065 USA
SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS
+1 650 364 9324
• Fedora 11 and 12 Linux OS
• Red Hat 5/CentOS 5 Linux OS info@rivermuse.com

Copyright © 2010, RiverMuse Inc. All Rights Reserved. | Legal. Page 5

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